Notes and Essays -- John Brown

Told that Nazar Daletskyi had died, his Ukrainian family buried what they thought were his remains. He turned up three years later in a prisoner-of-war exchange.   Nazar Daletskyi at his own grave in the village of Velykyi Doroshiv in western Ukraine on Sunday.  By  Maria Varenikova  and  Evelina Riabenko Photographs by  Oksana Parafeniuk  Reporting from Velykyi Doroshiv, a village in the Lviv region of western Ukraine   The New York Times , March 19, 2026 On his first day home after nearly four years in Russian captivity, Nazar Daletskyi took a walk to his village’s small cemetery in western Ukraine. There, he gazed down at his own grave. Weeks before, Mr. Daletskyi and dozens of others had been freed in an exchange of prisoners of war. He learned from a Ukrainian security officer that a DNA mistake had led his relatives three years ago to bury a bag of remains they thought were his own. On paper, the officer said, Mr. Daletskyi no longer exis...